No more excuses - you've got to blame the people!

 

My full-time teaching career started with my going for interview in Kettering, a town in Northamptonshire of which I had not previously heard.  (As I was an aspiring English teacher, I do hope you appreciated my not ending the last sentence with a preposition.)  Anyway, I got the job in what was then Kettering Boys’ Grammar School, but which had become Kettering Boys’ School by the time I took up my post.  I spent a year and a bit there learning my craft and finding out that full-time teaching was a truly demanding job.

     I had long moved back to Cardiff when the Northampton that I knew went, I’m tempted to say pear-shaped, but that image is not grotesque enough for what actually happened to the political landscape.

     This link will take you to a lucid explanation of the appalling mismanagement of the council resulting in its bankruptcy: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-56488909

     In the recent elections, the electorate of the two new political entities that were formed from the rubble of what had been destroyed by the past administrations, saw fit to vote majorities to the Conservatives – the party which caused all the trouble in the first place.  The electorate have AGAIN voted for people who callously and viciously made their lives much, much worse through criminal mismanagement of public funds.

     Why?

   That plaintive question has been echoing through my mind as I have considered the decisions the electorate have made not only in Britain but also here in Spain.

     We have recently had elections for the council in Madrid and the electorate here have voted (in a record turnout) for a council which will be made up of PP and Vox.  The first of those, PP, is the most corrupt political party in Western Europe – and that is not my prejudice speaking, just type in  “PP in Spain corruption” and you will find a shockingly wide breadth of coverage of what is almost comical illegal behaviour.

     If you want to be more specific then you could search for “PP Corruption in Madrid” and you might come across something like, https://elpais.com/ccaa/2018/09/30/madrid/1538326069_865164.html

Where, even if you don’t understand Spanish, it doesn’t take much to make out what the headline “La década viciosa de Madrid” might mean, and you will be able to see some of the unsavoury characters who have defiled the city over the last ten years.

     And people voted for them!  Again!

     In a 71% turnout, 44.7% voted for PP!  The other party that the corrupt and corrupting PP will govern with is Vox.  Vox is usually described as a “far right” party, but it is simpler and more realistic to consider them as Franco supporting fascists.  Their pronouncements and policies are repugnant.  They are rabble rousing scum.  And they have pledged to support PP “to keep the left out”.  If you add the 9.1% of the electorate who voted for Vox  to the 44.7% who voted for PP, you have a clear majority of the voters choosing right wingers and fascists to form their government of choice!

     By way of comparison, in the Catalan parliament out of 41 representatives, only 2 members of PP were elected! 

     Catalonia truly is another country!

    

     Meanwhile in Britain, the third-rate incompetents, bullies and liars who comprise the ‘government’ of Johnson, the liar-in-chief, are gifted with gains.  Hartlepool, which has been a Labour voting constituency since its inception votes Conservative.  Admittedly, it was an area which overwhelmingly voted for Brexit and presumably, the voters have seen or heard nothing negative enough with the lies of Johnson, and the criminal mishandling of the Covid response, or the Brexit train-crash of financial and social disaster to make them doubt the positivity of voting for a shameless narcissist and his corrupt crew!

     If Johnson had been watching European politics (as if!) then he would probably be considering a snap General Election.  The Zombie leader of the PPs in Madrid has shown just how much an electorate can ignore when they are asked to put their cross next to a party which is corrupt, selfish, criminal, menial, duplicitous, mendacious, uncaring, and all the other insulting adjectives that come to mind in describing your typical Conservative, no matter whether it be in Spain on in the UK.

     God help us all!

 

Tomorrow is Toni’s birthday.  The Family will be arriving in instalments and we should have a good celebration.  Perhaps then I will be in a more mellow mood and my writing might reflect that.

     We’ll see!

 

 

    

How to keep your sanity in world that is too right-wing for, well, sanity!

 

 

 

 

For the past few years, when the political situations in Catalonia, Spain and the UK got too much to bear, I turned to the antics of Trump and the Republican party to demonstrate that there were depths that this side of the Atlantic had not yet plumbed.  Now that Trump is more of a distant malign emanation from the depths of swampy Florida rather than an ever-present daily horror show in the newspapers, one has to rely on the pathetic, yet entirely disgusting, cavorting (I can’t think of any other word to describe what should be a serious political party) of the Trumpian Republicans in Congress and the Senate to set against whatever depressing failures one sees around the political sites in Spain and the UK.

     I have realised that I simply can’t do it anymore, by which I mean reading about Republicans with the semi-detached amazement at the jaw-droppingly callous human distain that they display on a daily basis.  I can no longer pretend that the grotesque views that Republican espouse were a function of The Orange Small Handed Horror.  Whatever the Republican Party might have been in the past, what it is now is a morass of ante-diluvian viciousness: the anti-abortion, election “rigging”, voter suppression, homophobia, etc etc etc – all the tropes of the far right coming home to roost (if they ever left) in the comfortable prejudices of an apology for a political party.  What is happening today is that the repressive idiocies of the Republicans and the super-charged language of political hatred and contempt that they use against their opponents is all too present in the life of politics here in Europe.

     The ‘comical’ lies of Trump are more than matched by the serial mendacity of Johnson.  Johnson now is a flagrant liar because he makes no attempt to correct the record when he has been found out.  And still the Conservatives are ahead in the polls.  Why should a liar change his deceit when he doesn’t seem to be penalized for the lies he tells?

     England and the USA are cursed with a two-party system: Conservative and Labour; Republican and Democrat.  Where do the votes go for those voters who look with something approaching horror at the way that they right wing parties are heading? 

     In the USA, the rhetoric of the right means that even the mildest of the Democrats is branded as extreme left wing or “Socialist”, whereas here in Europe they would be seen as just left of centre.  Old fashioned Tories must shudder to see what the party has become under the “leadership” of the third-rate chancers who now control the Conservatives, but their escape route of the Lib Dems has long since been shown to be a wasted vote and they probably will never bring themselves to vote for Labour, even with that nice Mr Starmer as leader.

     The situation is different in Catalonia, where the national conservative part PP has a derisory following and the so-called “centre right” of C’s has also been rejected at the polls.  The “”Socialist”” party PSOE and a variety of Independence and left-wing parties hold sway here, but we have no government as the parties have found it impossible to work together to get some sort of coalition off the ground.  As the days go by with a government “in functions” the frustration of the voters becomes more and more palpable.

     In a way in which I have never felt so strongly before, governments are simply not working; justice is becoming a by-word for partisanship; inequality is becoming more and more pronounced; corruption is rampant and the ordinary voter is made to feel more and more irrelevant as the tiny percentage of the rich and the powerful continue to act with absolute impunity.

     The word “Democracy” has become devalued as politicians mouth the word but ignore the concept in the ways in which they behave.

     Biden is trying to make a difference.  In spite of the torrents of abuse that he has to take as he tries to redress some of the worst excesses of his predecessor’s reign of terror, he is a beacon of hope.  But what is going on in the red states of America in the almost comical attempts to gerrymander the political situation to benefit the right is a worry.  Biden does not have his full term to make a difference.  His majority in the Senate is on a knife edge and if that is taken away by Senate elections next year then we have seen previously that a hypocritical Republican Party will be much more than willing to sacrifice country to the demands of the Party and stymie any bipartisan legislation and wait for 2024 to Bring Back Trump to win again!

     The election in Madrid will be an indication here of how the political situation is working.  The leader of Madrid at the moment is an unprepossessing Zombie of PP who has made the most remarkable pronouncements in the lead up to the voting.  We have an extreme right-wing party which is openly Fascist and revers the late Fascist dictator Franco.  The level of political debate is debased.  Threats and counter threats depress.

     It is very difficult not to be depressed at the prospects for a positive outcome to the election in the febrile atmosphere where everything seems to be tainted by Covid.

     But I remain an optimist.  

   And as long as I stop reading about red-neck, red-state Republicans and concentrate on things like the medical personnel who have worked tirelessly to vaccinate and medicate, then I can always look forward to a communal recognition that unselfish caring is also positive self-regard.

What is worse?

 

 

Where is William Rees-Mogg?  What crypt have the Conservatives confined him in?  He is certainly safely far away from public view.

     You must understand that I do not enquire about his whereabout through any concern on my part about his welfare, but my mind has turned towards him as I have read through the Guardian reports about the latest shenanigans in the on-going horror story of corruption and sleaze, incompetence and arrogance, callous disregard and breath-taking audacity that mark each new day in the life of the United Kingdom’s so-called Conservative government.

   Why, you would have every reason to ask, does my mind turn towards Rees-Mogg during these testing times?  Why dwell, even for a moment, on the Slytherin Dark Prince of Pure Brexit?

     Well, the truth of the matter is that the Liars’ Liar, Pile-‘em-High Johnson, has descended so far into the miasmic pit of deceit and corruption that, by comparison, his satanic highness Rees-Mogg looks more and more like a reasonable chappie.

     And that assertion tells you that British Conservative Politics has reached a level of awfulness that all previous language and concepts designed to express disgust are clearly inadequate.  If Who-Knows-How-Many-Children Johnson is now an even less attractive option than Rees-Mogg, then we truly have reached the End Times.

     But, just when you despair, Gove comes to mind, to remind you that there are depths that even the blundering loquacity of Johnson and the diamond distain of Rees-Mogg have yet to plumb.

     The gut-wrenching awfulness of Gove’s appearance in the Commons to justify/explain/excuse the criminal train wreck of a government led by a serial liar was a master class in repulsive Jesuitical casuistry.  Gove is no fool and he chooses his words with a care which is entirely lost on the average baying hooray henry of his party. 

     Every ‘speech’ by Gove should be analysed by a group of hand-picked pedants to find out exactly what he said, rather than what he gave the impression of having said.  Or perhaps his ‘speeches’ should be analysed by a group of insurance policy underwriters who are well used to finding ways out of fulfilling their obligations.  They are the ones who can look at a statement like, “I did not hear him say that when I was in the room,” and explain that ambiguity allows, “I was outside the room when I heard him say it,” to be true without making the first statement a lie.

     I always feel sullied when I hear Gove speak; his words are the equivalents of smuts – to hear is to be defiled.

     Johnson, in so far as he has penetrated the consciousness of the people around me who are not British, is regarded as an absurd figure of fun, he is treated with common contempt and is summed up in the public’s mind by the before-and-after pictures of his first post-lockdown haircut, where the universal response was, “Did he pay actual money for that!”

     I am ashamed of the government of the United Kingdom, and I am deeply ashamed that so many of my fellow countrymen continue to support a Prime Minister who, in my view, should be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter.

 

Gusty times ahead!

 

 

High winds meant that I declined to use my bike and took the car instead – and everyone else appeared to have made the same decision and so the car park was relatively full within a couple of minutes of the opening of the centre.

     As the pool is enclosed with a retractable roof (I am not insane!) we are fairly well protected from the surrounding weather, but I noted as I gained the end of my first length that a door to the outside world had been opened and one could experience the cool gusts of a thoroughly unpleasant wind.

     It was only at the end of the swim when you have to go from the pool area via a short flight of steps and a linking corridor to the changing rooms that you see the weather clearly.  Not pleasant, and I was grateful to have a hot cup of tea and sturdy plate glass to give me an acceptable climate.

     But, by the time I came to leave, the wind had dropped and the sky was showing a little more blue.  In the afternoon we had sunshine, but not enough sunshine to tempt me to go on the bike ride that is the usual end of my morning of exercise.

     As ever, another cup of tea and my mobile phone with The Guardian were enough to keep me stationary in my armchair until it was time for lunch.

     From my reading of the actions of what one might laughingly refer to as ‘my government’ in the UK, it really does look as though, after four years of the bloody Conservatives saying that a deal was easy and oven-ready and all the other lying descriptions given, we are headed for a no-deal Brexit.

 

      

 

     The latest piece of ill-judged, crass, idiocy by Johnson is to flaunt four Royal Navy gunboats to patrol our fishing waters in the event of a no-deal Brexit and foreigners attempting to do what they have been doing for the past umpteen years.  Four ships for the entire coastal waters of Britain, that’s about 11,000 miles, divided by four, that means that each of the Royal Navy ships will have to patrol about 2,700 miles of coast each.  And what is the speed of these ships?

     So, the threat of these ships is purely, but not entirely, cosmetic, harking back to Britannia Rules the Waves and all that.  In other words, an empty gesture, that the EU must have been expecting from the empty vessel that they have had to deal with.  For years.  And years.

     I am still hoping that Johnson is going to have some appreciation of what he is about to do and realize that he will have to take a hit (however he spins it) in the interest of the nation.  As the seconds tick away, my hope is getting more and more hysterical, especially when I remember that no matter how cataclysmically stupid a decision appears to be, people still make it.  Brexit did win the referendum and the USA elected Trump.  However stupid and unthinkable, it could happen.

     But I will relax into the remaining hours of the weekend, yea! even unto the last minute to midnight on Sunday in the weary hope of sanity (at least partial) governing our 'government'.

 

Meanwhile to get my mind away from events that I cannot influence, we had a decent menu del dia in our usual Saturday restaurant and even felt buoyed up enough to do a little light domestic shopping.

     On the cultural front, I have re-discovered my tidied-up notebook and am working on the structure and content.  I am reasonably confident that the concept is workable, but the rest of this weekend should give me a clearer idea of the direction and, more importantly, whether that direction is worth taking!

Concerned? Write!

 

 

I am determined to write something which related to my next book.  I have written notes and sketched out possible content, but I haven’t formally written a passage which could be part of the finished product.  I feel that I am at the stage where the writing of anything is better than writing nothing, just to get me going.  I do realize that what I write today may well be discarded in the future, but that junked writing is usually a way of forming my literary path forward to what I regard as a satisfactory conclusion.

     What makes the writing more difficult is that I am attempting to use a central theme as the unifying element in a book that will be composed of a number of discrete parts.  If it is not to be too ‘bitty’ then the theme will have to play a major role in the cement keeping the whole thing together.

     I will be able to work on the detail of the different parts, but they will only be effective if I can unite them in a way that is not too forced.

     Any writing I do tonight, will be a way of keeping my mind off what is happening (or perhaps not happening) in a certain dinner party in Brussels where one of the politicians in whom I have no trust whatsoever is seeing himself as a sort of White Knight bravely jousting his way in the savage lair of the EU and staunchly defending the national freedoms that he has done so much to imperil!   

     I truly believe that Johnson is coward enough to risk a no-deal outcome rather than get a deal which, while it might be good (or at least better than no deal) for the country would do little for his prestige and life in the Conservative party.  But, sufficient unto the day and all that, let’s wait (again) to see what happens.  But I remain pessimistic and, let’s face it, I have the evidence of the last four and a half years to justify depression when I see Conservative politicians going to Europe to do their thing!

 

The swimming pool was substantially emptier today now that the Puente is over and people are back to work.  I managed to do my entire swim in a lane to myself, so that always starts me off in a good mood for the day.

 

I am hearing more people express qualified doubts about early acceptance of the vaccines.  The rumour mills are working overtime and I have already heard a number of what I think are unsubstantiated claims of reactions to the drugs.  Considering how few have actually been vaccinated, it is truly remarkable how quickly people are speaking authoritatively about them.  I am still, however, staunchly in the early adopter camp.  All I need now is someone somewhere to offer me a jab.

     At present I am not clear about how Spain and Catalonia are going to roll out the vaccinations, but I am determined not to be disappointed if I get mine sometime in April.

     I have also noted that some experts are saying that we should get used to the wearing of masks for virtually the whole of next year, with next winter being a time when we will need to be especially careful, no matter who has had the vaccine.  An important point was made by one expert who said that being vaccinated did not meant that the individual was incapable of spreading the virus to others, only that the person would be unlikely to suffer the effects of the virus personally. 

     This is going to be a very difficult message to get across, as it is much more likely that people will consider themselves immune as soon as they are injected and make the assumption that they are safe, when they most assuredly are not.

     Well, if nothing else, it will give me the opportunity to purchase a daffodil mask that I will wear on St David’s Day, March 1^st, 2021!

 

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 39 – Thursday, 23rd APRIL

 

We seem to be trapped in a never-ending news cycle that endlessly repeats itself: statistics and excuses.

     It is fairly obvious that the present front bench is no longer truly concerned about how this crisis works out in terms of the human cost, but rather in who is going to be blamed for the way in which the crisis has been managed.  They can already see the various paragraphs of blame in the conclusions of the inevitable public inquiry and they are thinking, as always, only about their own survival and that of their discredited party. 

     If I was a member of the group of scientific experts that have had any contact with the Conservative politicians I would be engaging a lawyer now to keep a watching brief for the time that the Tory scum begin to put all the blame for their actions on the selective scientific advice that they will claim that they always followed.

     I think the case for corporate manslaughter charges against relevant ministers is almost overwhelming and I would willingly support a crowd-funded appeal for funds to prosecute the perpetrators of the fatal self-serving dithering incompetence that characterised the management of the crisis so far.

     The story of the PPE supplies get more murky by the second, with the Turkish connection being more akin to farce than competent procurement.  We have utilized the RAF to fly to Istanbul to get a partial cargo back!  The PRIVATE firm that our government has used to store the PPE stockpile has been sold to another firm during the crisis!  You couldn’t make this rubbish up, but is par for the course for a government that can pay millions to a ferry line with no boats.

     All this and Brexit too!  The bunch of third-rate incompetents still have the desire to take us out of the EU with no deal.  Weeping is not enough!

     The papers are taking a little time to consider who might be the scapegoat for the fatal disaster of crisis management.  The obvious candidate is Matt Hancock the man without fixed ethos, who swallowed his previous beliefs for the tempting offer of a seat in the sort of cabinet that he would have shunned previously.  But, what the hell, in the dregs of ability that is the present Conservative Party, he is some sort of star.

     With what has happened so far in the debacle of the crisis he has said things and made claims that cannot all be true.  He has therefore said the thing that was not.  And there is the question of the 100k tests that he has promised by the end of the month which are clearly impossible to deliver.  So that will be a resigning matter.

     With a fragmented cabinet in the absence of the Blond Buffoon and with the in fighting that must be going on, poor old Beckett must be wandering around with a selection of knives sticking into his back! 

     I have zero sympathy for him.

The talk of exit strategies is gaining ground, though we are not getting very much clarity about what they might be.

     Here in Spain I think that the weekend relaxation for the isolation of kids might be a way of the government seeing how well or how badly the population runs with this.  If it is a disaster and people take advantage then perhaps there will be a swift reversion to a stricter lockdown; if it goes well, perhaps it will be a start of a series of relaxations.

     The Scottish parliament is saying that some form of social distancing will be in force until the end of the year, at least for the at risk sections of the population.  We are not dealing with any definite information; there is no way that plans can be made for any events months ahead.  When is flying to and from Spain going to start again?  No idea.  And no idea about when we might expect to get an idea.

At least the sun shone for some time today.  I’m thankful for that.

    

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 37 – Tuesday, 21st APRIL

 

It’s still raining.  It has been raining solidly for three days.  This is not what I paid up to join when I moved to Catalonia!  Where is the sun?

     Poor weather merely forces one to take even more notice of the news, and that of course drives one back to the weather once again.

     The scandal of the non-appearing PPE in Britain and the way that statistics are being thrown around concerning testing make me angry.  Politicians seem to equate hopes with hard statistics, as with the Turkish PPE that were talked about as supplying the NHS and they are still waiting.  In exactly the same way the Health Secretary was talking about the availability of tests for Covid-19, but the key question is how many tests have actually been administered?  From Beckett’s answers this evening, it is obvious that he is going to weasel out of resigning when he fails to get to the target for testing at the end of the month.

     While the supply of PPE rumbles on and with of course hospitals and care homes and health workers failing to be adequately supplied, the earlier part of that scandal has come back to haunt the government.

     Some time ago Britain was invited to join other EU countries in uniting forces to source supplies of PPE using the buying power of bulk purchase.  Though invited, Britain did not sign up.  Why?  According to the Conservatives, it was because they didn’t see the email.  According to a senior Civil Servant it was a political decision taken to placate the Brexit idiots.  According to the Conservatives, it was a single email that was missed.  According to other official is was a series of invitations that were not acted upon. 

     I have to say that I am inclined to agree with Philip Pullman who has written that he thinks the entire government front bench should resign at once, and if it can be shown that they ignored the invitation because of Brexit prejudice then they should be charged with manslaughter.  The Conservatives have issued a detailed refutation of the story in the Sunday Times that questioned their record and their motivations – but this story will haunt (as it should) the Government and the way that they played the early stages of the crisis.

Here in Spain and Catalonia there is almost terminal confusion about the government’s plans to loosen the lockdown to allow children to leave the house when accompanied by a parent.  The details of who, what, when, where, how often, how far, how old, how many and on and on are all bubbling up and there is no real authoritative governmental voice giving the sort of clarity that needs to be in place if there is not to be utter chaos when the policy comes into play.

     Like the masks that each citizen is entitled to.  On the first day of the distribution of the masks via the pharmacies the system crashed and so the television news carried stories of chaos rather than the extension of protection for us all!

     There are too many stories of chaos and too few of planned competence.

On the lighter side, I have received my parcel from Pound Shop.  It seemed to me that that could be a way of getting essential supplies through via the UK.  It all depends, of course, on how you define ‘essential’.

     In order to make the delivery charge worthwhile I had to spend about fifty euros and what I ended up with was a positive lucky bag of questionable goodies ranging from ‘chip shop curry granules’ via Cross and Blackwell baked beans to dark chocolate Toblerone. 

     In times of isolation, one needs one’s treats!